Knowledge and Attitude towards Nutrition among Pregnant women in Rural areas of Dhaka city, Bangladesh

The knowledge on the nutritional status of pregnant women in Bangladesh is not enough. About 60% of South Asian women have underweight children due to a lack of healthy food and nutrition during their childhood. Pregnant women are the main victims of unhealthy eating habits, which are responsible for malnutrition. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess knowledge and attitudes about nutrition among pregnant women in the rural areas of Dhaka, Bangladesh. A brief and descriptive study was conducted in four randomly selected villages in Nawabganj district in Dhaka, Bangladesh with 384 randomly selected pregnant women. Data were collected from respondents using a semi-structured questionnaire by face-to-face interviews, after taking participants’ verbal consent. The SPSS 20 model is used for data entry and analysis. The findings of the study indicate that more than half of the respondent’s level of knowledge about nutrition was excellent or good but only 43.0% respondents had excellent or good attitude towards nutrition. The level of knowledge was strongly associated with the age of respondents, the type of family and the number of pregnancies and the level of attitude was strongly associated with the age of the respondent and the number of pregnancies. Based on the results of the study, it can be recommended that healthy nutrition education should be strengthened to empower rural mothers to understand the importance of nutritious food during pregnancy. Long-term study on a large scale with the similar population can help to generalize the findings.